Asterisk Mag 13: Science

By Clara Collier @ 2026-03-11T19:21 (+13)

Note: This post was link-posted from the Asterisk by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Summaries were auto-generated using GPT 5.2. Any mistakes are our own.

Why do rats laugh? Will AI cure cancer? Laser vision. Thomas Kuhn. IPCC AR6 does not say what you think it says. ESP. Development angst. The breakfast meeting that changed the world. 32 different words for field. Would it kill them to hire a graphic designer?

Asterisk is a quarterly journal of clear writing and clear thinking about things that matter (and, occasionally, things we just think are interesting). In this issue:

• Karson Elmgren argues that while many natural languages are disappearing, linguistic diversity is simultaneously transforming through specialized jargon and constructed languages, which create new cognitive tools and communities even as we face trade-offs in preserving heritage tongues.
• I argue that in a modern scientific democracy, individuals must critically but cautiously engage with contested science—protecting and holding institutions accountable while updating beliefs under uncertainty to make better collective decisions.
• Jolie Gan argues that as U.S. federal funding for basic science declines, universities must build communication infrastructure to keep slow, foundational research legible and competitive for philanthropic and private capital without compromising rigor.
• Matthew Jordan traces how the history of science evolved from heroic, progress-oriented narratives to sociological and critical accounts, arguing that practitioners and scholars should now build historically informed perspectives that both contextualize science and responsibly guide its future impact.
• Afra Wang argues that Chinese-backed industrialization in Ethiopia reveals how “factory logic” spreads a development model shaped by fear-driven growth, weak institutions, and gendered labor hierarchies, raising hard questions about whether exporting rapid manufacturing-led progress truly delivers broad, durable gains.
• Abhishaike Mahajan argues that AI’s highest-impact role in drug development is not generating more candidate molecules but improving clinical-stage decisions—such as patient stratification and trial design—where better use of human data could reduce failure rates and increase the expected value of biomedical R&D.
• Leah Libresco Sargeant argues that competitive science fairs have shifted from cultivating independent scientific reasoning to rewarding résumé-building lab affiliations, and proposes redesigning them to prioritize curiosity, replication, null results, and intellectual ownership over prestige and prizes.
• Andrew Miller examines the sensor-fusion versus vision-only divide in autonomous vehicles, arguing that real-world safety data and falling hardware costs favor hybrid systems and that the decisive question for society is not technical purity but what safety standard we demand relative to human drivers.
• Adam Marblestone argues that neuroscience’s model of a hardwired “steering” system shaping a flexible learning system may offer underexplored insights for AI alignment, suggesting that understanding how brains generate and ground reward signals could inform the design of safer, value-aligned AGI.

Coming soon

• Merchants of Certainty by Alex Trembath
• The Institute Behind Taiwan's Chip Dominance by Karthik Tadepalli

Huge thanks to everyone who helped bring Asterisk to life — we hope reading it brings you as much joy as making it did.